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Hyper-Über-Proto Gerosha
Hyper-Über-Proto Gerosha is one of many narrative universes that comprise the Gerosha multiverse in Dozerfleet Comics. It is said to be the primordial predecessor of all currently-understood Gerosha continuity, having pre-existed the term "Gerosha" itself. It also goes by such nicknames as the Initial Gray Champion Fanfic Standalone Universe, the Dozerfleet Hawthorne Fanfic Universe, and the Gray Champion Proto-Universe. It first existed in September of 2001, and was succeeded by Über-Proto Gerosha in October of 2002. Prominent inhabitants Reinterpreted Gray Champion characters John Domeck / Gray Champion II Main article: Gray Champion (comics) Initially interpreted to be a literal ghost that somehow got trapped in the Marlquaan, he is later stated to be a man who got trapped in the Marlquaan and gained ghost mimicry and other abilities. John and his friend Miles Wealthington were part of an order called the Union of Blessed Power. The UBP made it its mission to seize all the Marlquaanite rubies before the Society of the Icy Finger did. The UBP's goal was to either hide or ultimately destroy the rubies, eliminating their potential to create new Marlquaanites. This would prevent the rubies from allowing the Marlquaan's power to be abused by mankind, creating armies of delusional men who would seek to use that power to become gods unto themselves and terrorize humanity - to make it clear that God is the ultimate power over all other forms, and alone is to be worshiped. Due to John's efficiency in frustrating the Icy Finger, he made it near the top of their hit list. He later finds himself lost in the future, where he must befriend a museum curator's daughter to learn how to function in a new time period. Since his introduction, Gray and elements of his origin story have changed little. The Icy Finger and Shrouded Entity proved to be his most lethal foes in the 17th century. The first truly lethal foe he encounters in the 21st century is Verdabbin, who is later replaced with Eqquibus in narratives succeeding Earth-G0. He also has to battle Chillingworth II, a revived Shrouded Entity, Bosom-Serpent, and other enemies of a supernatural and ordinary criminal degree. Eric Andro See also: The Gray Champion: Freedom's Apparition Like the corrupt Governor Edmund Andros of old, modern-day Eric Andro is an officer in Boston with more than his fair share of being corrupt. He and the new Gray Champion inevitably clash. Reinterpreted Scarlet Letter characters Hester Prynne Main article: Hester Prynne A reinterpretation of the classic protagonist from The Scarlet Letter. Hester married Roger in a more-ideal time, when the two of them had strong aspirations of helping a Dutch minister with his plans to start a missionary project in the Hmong parts of Thailand. Roger briefly visited that area, only to see a small amount on nin-chyo that was stolen from a vault be put on public display. He saw it melt a man into a puddle. After uncovering a Marlquaanite ruby back in the Netherlands, Roger was given the ability to freeze things solid. The Society of the Icy Finger found him, and played to his fascination with his newfound powers. He was soon seduced by their temptations of him becoming part of "something bigger" though them, and quickly went to the dark side. Hester fled to the Americas to get away from him. However, she was unable to explain to any court that Roger had become a deranged Marlquaanite. Talk of the Marlquaan was forbidden in most circles. For her to even mention it would lead to counter-allegations of witchcraft on her part. Therefore, she was unable to finalize a divorce. She fled anyway, hoping to start her life over as a seamstress. This put her and the town preacher, Arthur Dimmesdale, into a trap when the Shrouded Entity drugged both of them - leading to them having an affair while under the influence. The Entity did this in retaliation to Dimmesdale having successfully resisted both the Zeran traps and the Entity's various efforts to steal some of Dimmesdale's blood to make an evil clone. A few months later, Miles "the Oraphim" Wealthington drove the Entity out of Boston. But superstitious fears of him remained among the populace, leading to a growing fascination with witchcraft by the locals. Hester discovered that her night with Dimmesdale led to pregnancy, and the two tried to cover up the affair. When that proved no longer possible, she covered for him by refusing to state who the child's father was. She was initially thrown in jail for the duration of her pregnancy. However, Miles found her and bestowed on her possession of the Beamer's Ruby - which he had hidden in a necklace pendant and didn't tell her of its true nature. She believed it was a gift that she was entrusted with keeping safe, and nothing more. The guiding carve on it showed some of the ruby through what resembled a letter "A." The town investigator decided that the "A" stood well for "adultery," and made her wear the necklace in public as a public reminder of her shame. After discovering that her necklace was the Beamer's Ruby by accident, she started her own secret society to have it kept far out of the Icy Finger's reach. The ruby and necklace together came to be known as Hester's locket - one of the most powerful artifacts in all the known universe. Roger Chillingworth Main article: Roger Chillingworth Hester's estranged husband. Corrupted by his newfound Marlquaanite powers, he sets out initially to search the Boston area for Miles Wealthington - who has a price put on his head by the Icy Finger. He also keeps half an eye open for John Domeck, not knowing John is in Lynn with Kicked Deer. Roger capitalizes on the fact that the Shrouded Entity has been driven out of the forests outside Boston as an opportunity to use the Entity's old lair to experiment with his own dark powers. He was given a third assignment to recover any Marlquaanite rubies he could find. However, he gets distracted by learning that his wife had an affair. He vows to find out who is responsible, and take revenge. As his suspicions grow that the town preacher Dimmesdale is responsible, he begins slowly poisoning and causing freezer burn damage to parts of Dimmesdale's body as a way to slowly torture the minister. Dimmesdale begins to suspect with time that Roger is poisoning him. When Dimmesdale decides to confess publicly, this makes Roger desperate. Roger tries to freeze Dimmesdale in public to show off how powerful he has become. However, his is interrupted mid-blast when a panicking Hester inadvertently activates the Beamer's Ruby inside her necklace pendant. The beam reflects off the letter "A" carved into Dimmesdale's chest, robbing Roger of his Marlquaanite bond and causing his powers to backfire. Roger is soon shattered into a million chunks of frozen flesh. Roger's antics would later inspire Miles Charleston in the 21st century to poison the mother-daughter relationship of John's two biggest allies, hoping to cut off John ultimately from the museum that proved to be his greatest asset. Like the first Chillingworth, the second one eventually goes mad with power. Pearl Prynne A reinterpretation of Hawthorne's character. This Pearl is a very inquisitive child who later grows up to become an investigator into Marlquaan-related paranormal activity. She becomes a historian, as well as a detective solving Marlquaanite-related crimes. She begins to monitor the early predecessors of Marlquaanites who would later be known as superheroes and supervillains. In some ways, her agency becomes a predecessor to SCALLOP. Arthur Dimmesdale The town preacher in Boston. After a confrontation with the Shrouded Entity in which he came out on top, he became a target of the Entity's quest for revenge. The Entity drugs Arthur and Hester in an effort to get them to sleep together, hoping that shaming them publicly will be an adequate substitute for failure to body snatch them. Dimmesdale eventually becomes the target of Chillingworth's vengeance when the latter suspects the former of being Pearl's father. Miles Wealthington / Oraphim See also: A So-Called Heretic A temporary Marlquaanite and best friend of John Domeck while he was in England. Miles temporarily becomes an angel-themed Marlquaanite hero named "Oraphim," after the angel type, in order to drive the Shrouded Entity out of the woods near Boston. However, locals' beliefs that Shrouded Entity was the biblical Devil incarnate led to a rise in fascination with witchcraft in the Boston area. This, in turn, provided the Society of the Icy Finger with in-roads into Bostonian society. They would use those connections to attempt to get to John Domeck and Kicked Deer in Lynn, to get back at John for foiling their plans for world domination by keeping most of the Marlquaanite rubies out of their hands. It is Miles who first bestowed the Beamer's ruby on Hester. It is also Miles who traps the Shrouded Entity in a block of ice in Greenland, where he remains trapped for over 400 years. Miles is later referenced in the Comprehensive Gerosha and Cataclysmic Gerosha story A So-Called Heretic. He was the friend of John's who secured one of the most dangerous of the Marlquaanite rubies - the Beamer's Ruby. Said ruby later became encased in a necklace pendant. That necklace set came to be known as Hester's locket, since Miles entrusted care of the ruby to Hester Prynne. His exploits were later added to the plot of A So-Called Heretic, which is canon to both Comprehensive and Cataclysmic Geroshas. Simon Bentforth / Shrouded Entity Main article: Shrouded Entity A being often called "the Black Man" by Bostonians, as referenced in The Scarlet Letter. He is a powerful Marlquaanite of the same class as Extirpon. He uses vulnerability of suggestion in others to feed his power, which he then uses to trap his victims in pocket dimensions in suspended animation. He often tries to hypnotize victims into giving him samples of their blood, which he has them add to his "book." He uses the blood samples to generate evil, half-mindless clones of his victims to serve as his minions. To advance his goals, he preys on superstitions of his targets and encourages them to consider him synonymous with the Devil. Those in-the-know properly referred to him by is Shrouded Entity alias. Hawthorne also referred to him as "the Black Man," not entirely grasping how that expression would be reinterpreted racially. An actual Scary Black Man with occult leanings wasn't defined until Über-Proto Gerosha, in the form of Sam "Honeybee Samuel" Wrikon. Shrouded Entity rarely did anything until Cataclysmic Gerosha, where he was defined in 2013 formally. In that universe, he is revived from his ice prison when Judge Terry Beliah tries to add him to the list of captured Marlquaanites in season 4 of Sodality. This plan ends horribly, leading to him causing a "zombie witch" apocalypse in the Netherlands. It takes the combined efforts of Hea Pang, Hester's locket, Extirpon, and the Gray Champion to strip Simon of his powers and defeat his army. However, their journey doing so kept the rest of the Sodality of Gerosha limited in their own ability to fight a war. This buys Beliah and the Phaletori more time to secure their takeover of Houston with a True Centhuen army. Such measures force the Sodality and SCALLOP to regroup if they are to conquer Beliah effectively and take the city back. Shrouded Entity has since been retconnned to have existed in all Gerosha timelines, and to have been defeated first by Oraphim. He is considered the Mephisto equivalent in Dozerfleet Comics, due to his strong demonic associations. He is alluded to briefly in A So-Called Heretic as having been done in by Miles Wealthington. However, John and Kicked Deer are too busy dealing with the Icy Finger's schemes and attempts on their lives to be too terribly concerned with Simon's whereabouts. Completely original characters * Chastity: A young woman living somewhere in the Great Plains. Several white settlers in this region formed a truce with the Indian tribes in that area. But one rogue Indian warlord with a hatred for the white man vows to disrupt the balance and harmony that has resulted, leading to the original Gray Champion returning to help her fight back. Her story and existence are not canon to any later Gerosha timeline. * Heeshwa Pwong: A Korean-American teenager and the daughter of a museum curator. She helps John Domeck adapt to life in the 21st century, as well as learn how to use his powers and adopt the Gray Champion identity for himself. As of Comprehensive Gerosha, she was renamed Hea Pang. * Verdabbin: A green-cloaked Marlquaanite meance with demonic red eyes and an obsession with spreading jihad throughout the globe. He was replaced in later timelines with Eqquibus. * Mrs. Pwong: Heeshwa's mother, who was a museum curator. In later versions, she was renamed Dae Pang. * Seductria: A Marlquaanite posing as a succubus, who tries to place a hypnotic spell on all of Iowa to turn the youth into sex-crazed zombie minions. She was replaced with Miles Charleston / Chillingworth II in later universes, and her entire storyline in End of Decadence was removed from continuity. * Kicked Deer: John Domeck's Indian squaw wife. * Marge Ramirez / Mapacha / "The Fire Raccoon": John and Kicked Deer's daughter, who gets sent by the Marlquaan to the year 1995. She was initially raised in Colombia and became a superheroine battling the drug trade. This was changed in later renditions of Gerosha mythos to her having landed in Miami in 1995 and been raised by immigrants from Cuba to protect Miami. Development Basic Gray Champion mythos In September of 2001, American Literature Studies class at Holt Lutheran High School kicked into high gear. The then-current teacher, Traci Backus, wanted her class to become familiar with the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Therefore, The Scarlet Letter was made required reading for class. But before embarking on reading it, she whet the class' appetite for Hawthorne with his short story "The Gray Champion." The class enjoyed it so much, that one assignment resulting from it was that everyone in class should write a Hawthorne fanfic about the Gray Champion's return. The Dozerfleet founder took it a step further than what was needed, drafting a unique look for the character that gave him the trademark black mask and yellow eye pieces. The original Dozerfleet Gray Champion, whose name was never identified, appeared in a short story where he came to the aid of a girl named Chastity who lived somewhere in the Great Plains. News about how great Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movie coming out in 2002 was going to be led to some strong interest in making a similar story reworked around the Gray Champion, especially when the Dozerfleet founder realized how iconic Gray's mask had become in such short time. A story was planned to have a character named John Domeck find himself travel through time and become a Gray Champion. This was to be achieved by way of the Marlquaan, to which he was bound. Verdabbin was to be the villain initially, a sort of nod to Ra's al Ghul and a symbol of the kind of Arab terrorism that was big news after 9/11. "Heeshwa Pwong" was introduced as a sort of sidekick to the new Gray, and became the template of what later became Hea Pang. It was in late 2001 and early 2002 that The Gray Champion: Modern Legend had a very basic plot outline done. This was followed by a barely-thought-through premise for a sequel: The Gray Champion 2: End of Decadence. A succubus character was to be the villain in that story. This early work became the basis for The Gray Champion: Freedom's Apparition later on. In addition to that, it formed an early foundation for Mapacha, the Marlquaan as an essential component of Gerosha mythos, and Marlquaanites being formally defined. There was to be a Champion Corps established as well; Red, White, and Blue Champions underneath the Gray one. Gray would meet Heeshwa in Grand Rapids in this version. That was later changed to meeting her in Boston. In Earth-G0, he arrives in Grand Rapids in 2002 and deals with the beginning of the War on Terror. Later renditions have him arrive in 2012 to Boston, where he must deal with the Crooked Rainbow and a corrupt law enforcement siding with Crooked Rainbow terrorists. Reinterpreted Scarlet Letter mythos .]] Included in this universe were elements of ''The Scarlet Letter and its mythos, also reinterpreted. Most essentially, the Marlquaan, Marlquaanites, and Hester's locket were first defined. Hawthorne's "Black Man," while easily reinterpreted as a supervillain imposter pretending to be the Devil in a body-snatching theme, was not formally defined as the Shrouded Entity until 2013. He since became retconned to be a part of every Gerosha reality as one of the most powerful Marlquaanites ever - even giving Extirpon a run for his money. His archenemy, Oraphim, was defined around the same time as being an alias to two different Marlquaanites. The first of these was Miles Wealthington, a friend of John Domeck's who both helped John drive the Entity out of Boston and is also responsible for the Beamer's Ruby becoming known as Hester's locket. The Hester's Locket subplot added a degree of comic book flair to the mythos of Hester, who initially made the Scarlet Letter out of stitching in Hawthorne's book. This is explained away as Hawthorne censoring history to keep the Icy Finger off his back. In this way, writing of The Scarlet Letter is explained as Hawthorne engaging in an act of reveal-to-conceal. Most importantly, the central characters themselves are reinterpreted. Chillingworth, rather than being shown how Hawthorne describes him, is being shown as a typical Ice Elemental supervillain bearing a megalomaniacal obsession with becoming more powerful. The creepy, short-shouldered curmudgeon of Hawthorne's tale is replaced with a broad-shouldered and imposing menace with a long beard. His traditional dark outfit is replaced with a bright cyan one. Especially standing out was his gloves, which he used for directing his ice beams. Hester herself was perhaps the most reinterpreted. She went from a Plain Jane freethinker to a sultry-looking woman with long, black hair in a prominent red dress. Her personality was embellished to be similar to that of Esmeralda from Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, though she didn't dare dance in a provocative manner. Format Letter-size printer paper and lined sheets were used intermittently to hand-draw concept art for this universe. Art for the Scarlet Letter reinterpretation was especially stylized, so as to invoke a "Disney" aesthetic. Hester was drawn to look as much like a Disney princess as possible, while Chillingworth was drawn to look like a typical Disney villain. John Domeck's Gray Champion outfit was drawn to resemble a dressy superhero, like a more-serious version of Darkwing Duck with muted colors. The drawings got mixed reactions in class, from classmates who liked the new visual look to purists of the novel who thought the visuals should appear less sensationalized and commercialized in appearance. Fate With a few noted-above changes, most of the contents of this universe were later absorbed into the timelines for every succeeding Gerosha universe. This universe's mythos remains the least changed from one component of the Gerosha multiverse to the next. Its immediate successor was Über-Proto Gerosha (Earth-G1) in 2002, which focused how the Shrouded Entity's influence on a young Sarah Umpid led to the events in the Meshalutian Trilogy. See also Category: Gerosha universe Category: Universes